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CHAPTER THREE

CARI sighed, impatience building ever higher as she hugged the baby to her chest. This date had been strange from the start, but it was getting stranger.

First this man had turned out to be so incredibly different from what she’d expected. Then there was the Italian element—not to mention the accent. The mother on the phone. Abandoned babies in dirty apartments. An assistant named Tito. If she hadn’t known better, she might think she’d landed in the middle of a scene from a bad B movie and was caught up in some really crazy dialogue. Mara had not forewarned her of all of this.

“Listen, Randy,” she began, eyes flashing as she prepared to read him the riot act.

His own eyes widened and his head went back. “Who the hell is Randy?” he demanded.

Shock jolted through her. This man wasn’t Randy? This man wasn’t the one she’d been waiting for, the one her friend had set her up with? This wasn’t her blind date?

But of course he wasn’t. Hadn’t she suspected that all along? The scales fell from her eyes—so to speak. This wasn’t Mara’s husband’s cousin after all. And that just about explained everything.

“Aren’t you Randy Jeffington?” she asked, though by now she knew darn well he wasn’t.

He shook his head, looking like a man who expected all things in his path to snap into place and had been sorely disappointed once again—a man who was planning to make sure someone paid for this.

“Never heard of him,” he growled at her.

“Uh-oh,” she echoed softly, swaying and feeling just a bit unsteady on her feet.

Suddenly she had a clear and shining picture of a tall, sandy-haired man in glasses carrying a red rose. She’d seen him just as they were leaving the club and she now had an epiphany. That, no doubt, was Randy. Poor guy.

But something in the back of her mind had known all along, hadn’t it? This handsome figure standing before her was just too good to be true. Or too bad, as the case might be.

And poor Randy Jeffington. Was he still wandering around the Longhorn Lounge looking for her? Her hand went to her mouth, her eyes huge.

“Omigosh. We’ve got to go back.”

He nodded grimly. “You’ve got that right. We’ve got the wrong dates.”

“There must be a woman named … whatever that weird name you said was … waiting for you back there.”

“Holding a red rose.”

“Oh, no.” She grimaced tragically. “Too bad we all picked the same color, isn’t it?”

He was still glowering at her. “Too bad we didn’t get identities straight from the beginning,” he said curtly.

She frowned, shifting the baby from one hip to the other and trying to remember how it had happened. “You called me Miss Cari. My name is Cari, with a C. I thought—”

“I called you Miss Kerry with a K.”

“Oh. Well, it was hard to know that at the time.”

“It was perfectly straightforward. You should have guessed.”

“I should have guessed? What about you? You acted like you were sure I was the one. I sort of just … followed along—like a dummy.” She frowned, remembering how she’d almost been in a trance. She could hardly believe that a man like this was the Randy she was waiting for. And it turned out she was right. She sighed plaintively.

“Oh, well. What’s done is done. Now we have to do our best to undo it.”

“Exactly.” He glanced down at the sleeping baby in her arms, then around the simple room. “Let’s get out of here.”

She looked down at the baby. “Are we taking him with us?”

“Well, we’re not going to leave him here.”

“No, I suppose not.” She bit her lip. This didn’t seem right, but she didn’t know what else they could do.

From the crib, she picked up a blanket and wrapped it around the baby while he picked up the diaper bag. Looking up, she sighed as her gaze traveled over the handsome man who’d brought her here. He was like a mythic figure, so tall and strong with matinee-idol looks. When something seemed too good to be true, you had to know it was likely to be so. Oh well, this had been interesting.

“So what is your name, anyway?” she asked as they looked around the apartment to make sure they weren’t forgetting anything.

“Max,” he said grimly. “Max Angeli.”

“And I’m Cari Christensen.”

He looked down at her and almost had to smile. She seemed to be able to maintain a sunny personality despite all odds against it. In contrast to what he was feeling himself, which was dour indeed. “You said that.”

“I thought you might not have caught it in the heat of the moment.”

He nodded, mouth twisting. “I wish you’d mentioned it while we were still at the club,” he said. “There you were waving at me with that damn red rose.”

“Oh!” She stopped and glared at him. “You’re not going to blame this whole catastrophe on me.”

He liked the fire in her eyes. She wasn’t his type and he would never have picked her out of a crowd, but there was something appealing about her just the same. He liked the liveliness of her reactions and he couldn’t resist teasing her a bit.

“Why not?” he said with a careless shrug. “If you’d been on your toes, this wouldn’t have happened. You made me stand up the woman I was supposed to be with. You may have killed that relationship.”

“And you messed up my date with Randy,” she reminded him, though she was beginning to realize he wasn’t really serious.

“Wasn’t it a blind date?” he asked her as they headed out of the apartment. He turned back to make sure the door was locked. “And you know what they say about love.”

“I know they say love is blind, but I think you have to give it a chance to grow before you can kill it.”

“Murderess,” he muttered, choking back a smile.

She sighed, glancing at him sideways. “You’re not exactly the Lone Ranger, my friend,” she chided, teasing him back now. “For all you know, you may have destroyed a great love affair.”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You and Randy?”

“Sure. Why not?” She made a face at him. “Romeo and Juliet. Anthony and Cleopatra. Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.” She struck a pose. “The names Cari and Randy might have belonged right up there with them all.”

“All doomed to tragedy,” he noted helpfully. “If a great passion is meant to be it’ll take more than a missed connection to destroy it.”

“Perhaps.” She flashed him a smile. “And yours, too.”

His laugh was short and humorless. “C.J. and I aren’t meant for love,” he said cynically. “But we are destined to make beautiful music together.”

She looked at him with bewilderment. “How can you know that when you don’t even know who she is?”

He knew enough about C.J. to know she was meant—unfortunately—to be very important in his life. He might not know what she looked like, but he had her number, just the same. His smile was bittersweet as he shrugged, pushing open the outer door to the building for her.

“Destiny is relentless.”

“Destiny. Such a strong word.”

But all that was forgotten as she looked at what they were heading into.

“It’s starting to rain,” she said with dismay, just as they stepped outside and the door clicked shut behind them.

“Yes,” Max said, wondering what else could go wrong. Just another layer of bad luck he supposed. But this was getting monotonous.

“Where’s the car?” she asked.

“The car?”

He looked where he’d parked it. The space was empty. His first thought was—did Tito take it? But no. He glanced at the driveway. Tito’s rental car was gone. He looked back at the place where he’d left his newly minted beauty. Sure enough, it was gone, too. His heart sank. And now he knew what else could go wrong.

He swore coldly and obscenely, and she pulled the baby closer, frowning at him, even though the words were in Italian. Reaching into his pocket, he realized he’d left his mobile in the car, which had now been stolen. He swore again.

“Where’s your phone?” he asked curtly.

She shook her head. “I forgot to bring it,” she said.

He stared at her, unable to believe this string of bad luck wasn’t over yet.

“My car’s been stolen. You have no phone. I have no phone. We just locked ourselves out of the building and it’s starting to rain.”

She sighed, shoulders sagging. That was quite a litany of woes. “We’re also stuck in the middle of a rather bad neighborhood,” she reminded him, looking around at the menacing shadows.

“Not for long.” He picked up the diaper bag and glanced down the street. The lights from downtown were visible in the sky. It was quite evident which way they needed to travel. “We’re going to have to walk, at least until we can flag down a cab. Let’s go. The sooner we start out, the sooner we’ll get there.”

Cari looked down at her three-inch heels. “Okay,” she said sadly, trying to smile.

He looked down at them, too. “Those shoes aren’t made for walking,” he noted dryly.

That was certainly a fact, but her feet sure were cute in them, and what that angle did to her beautiful legs was beyond mentioning. He swallowed hard as the thought came and nestled into his senses. Raising his gaze to her clear blue eyes, he got another jolt of erotic sensation and he shook his head, trying to stave it off. This was no time to let his libido go wild.

“I could carry you,” he said gruffly, still holding her gaze with his own. “But with the baby and all …”

“You will not!” she retorted, taking a step away from him. “I can walk. Believe me, I’ve done it for years.” She started off down the street, just to prove it. “I’ll carry the baby. You get the diaper bag. It’s heavier.”

They set off into the dark neighborhood, trying to ignore the drizzle. Most of the buildings seemed to be industrial and there was no sign of life coming from any that lined the street they were hurrying down. It was downright spooky.

Max pushed all thought about his beautiful Ferrari out of his mind. There was no point in mourning over a car when he had so many other things to worry about. An occasional driver went by, driving too fast to be flagged down, and there were no people out on the street—at least, none that made their presence known. But there was an eerie feeling, a sort of vague menace. This was not the sort of neighborhood either one of them would have wandered into voluntarily. Bad things tended to happen at night in areas like this.

Cari was feeling the creepiness as well, and instinctively she held the baby closer. Looking down, she felt a quick surge of tenderness for the child. Babies should be protected from harm and that was what adults where there for. But just as she had that thought, a flash of pain sliced through her. If only she’d been able to protect her own baby from harm. If only Brian had been more careful. If only …

No. She shook the regrets away. She’d been down that road so many times. Right after the accident that took her husband and her baby, she’d spent months almost drowning in recriminations, all the old “if only” cries of the heart. It had taken time and a bit of counseling to help her pull out of that downward spiral and she never wanted to take a plunge like that again. You could either immerse yourself in the past and die bit by bit, or reach out to the future and make a new life. Slowly, painfully, she was trying to do the latter.

But for now the past was useful in the training she’d had with her own baby. She seemed to bond naturally with this one, and that felt better than she had any right to expect.

So she looked over her shoulder, wishing they were in a better neighborhood.

“Do you have a weapon with you?” she asked Max, not really expecting him to answer in the affirmative, just expressing trepidation.

“Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my Glock,” he quipped, but she noticed he took a quick look over his shoulder as well. “If only I’d known I’d need it.”

“There you go,” she said lightly. “I guess you were never a Boy Scout.”

He gave her a long sideways look. “What would that have done for me?”

She shrugged her free shoulder and pulled the baby more closely to the other one. “You’d have known about their motto. Be Prepared.”

“Oh, I’m prepared.”

“Still, you’re not a real Texan, are you?” She sighed, pretending it was such a pity.

That was meant to get his goat and it did the job.

“I’m Italian,” he said with quick native pride. “That’s just as good, you know.” He grunted. “On second thought, it’s better.”

“Is it?” She gave him a mockingly taunting look. “From what I hear, Italians are pretty emotional, compared to Texans. They talk real fast, yell a lot, say outlandish things.”

“Sort of like Texans?” He got the joke, but he grinned and played along. “Why not? We enjoy life more than most people do. What’s more, we’re warm, loyal and generous to a fault.” His voice dropped in a husky way that was meant to make her senses quiver. “And we’re the most passionate lovers on earth.”

She was glad the darkness hid how hot her cheeks suddenly became. The surge of warmth surprised her. She’d fallen for this guy’s good looks and masculinity from the first, but in a reserved way, the way she dealt with most of life. She usually didn’t let emotions—or even attractions—down into her inner core. Her heart was protected by a thick wall of experience, not much of it good. Had she actually allowed this handsome Italian to get to her? She couldn’t let that happen.

“Well, good for you,” she said as lightly as she could manage. “I guess Miss C. J. Kerry will be glad to hear it.”

He frowned, not pleased to be reminded of the mess this evening had turned into. He wasn’t happy that he’d done anything to put Celinia Jade Kerry in a hostile mood. He needed her happy and compliant. The woman might be short on cash, but to a female, a sense of having been overlooked and ignored for another could blot all that out. He was going to have to be very tactful with the lady—tactful and apologetic.

Still, the night wasn’t a total loss at all. They had found Gino’s baby. Just an hour before, he hadn’t been sure there really was a baby. And now Jamie was in Cari’s arms and on his way to a complete medical checkup and a DNA test.

The fact that baby Jamie’s mother was missing disturbed him, and yet it made things easier in the short run. Eventually, he had no doubt they would find her. For just a moment he imagined what it would be like for his mother when he returned to Venice with Gino’s baby in tow—and hopefully, the deed to her family ranch in hand. Maybe that would erase some of the sadness from her eyes and bring back just a touch of joy to her life. That had been his goal from the start of this adventure. His mother’s happiness meant a lot to him.

Lost in thought, he didn’t notice the small group of nasty neighborhood thugs until they stepped out in front of them, blocking their way. The effect on his danger radar was immediate, though. He stopped Cari and the baby with an outstretched arm, putting his body between her and the three gang-bangers.

“What do you want?” he barked at them.

“I don’t know, man,” one of them sneered. Tall and thin, he wore a red bandanna tied tightly around his head. “What you got?”

“Nothing that will do you any good,” he said. “Let us pass.”

The one who had spoken before gave an ugly laugh. “No way,” he said, and suddenly there was the flash of a knife in his hand.

Max stared at the knife, knowing this was not good. What a night. This, on top of all the rest, just about did it for him. How much bad luck could one night bring? Fed up, he let his inner Italian take over. Moving toward the men in an aggressive rather than a defensive manner, he began to curse loud and long, in Italian, shouting at the men, shaking his fist at them for good measure. Instead of allowing himself to be the victim, he was threatening them.

Cari watched, her heart in her throat, fear sizzling through her. From every advice column she’d ever read, this seemed to be exactly the wrong way to go about this and she knew it. This could end very badly. But in the meantime, what could she do? Should she run? Not in these shoes. There was no chance. Everything in her wanted to protect the baby. But the way Max was acting, she was very much afraid she was going to see the knife slashing into his chest any moment.

And then what?

Still, it didn’t seem to be playing out quite the way she’d expected. To her surprise, the shortest of the men was pulling on the arm of the one with the knife.

“Hold on,” he was saying. “Just hold up, dude. Look at the guy.”

“Hey, get a load of that suit,” the third was saying nervously. “And listen to the way he talks. I think he’s Mafia, dude. You don’t want to screw with those guys.”

“Mafia?” The three of them stared hard at Max who was still cursing. “Hey, they can mess you up bad.”

“It’s not worth it, dude,” the one with the knife said at last, backing away. “Let’s get out of here.”

And they vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.

Max and Cari both stood very still, letting the adrenaline slow down, getting their breathing back to normal.

“Is that it?” she said at last.

“It seems to be,” he responded. He turned and came back quickly, taking her by the shoulders and staring down into her eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked intensely.

She nodded, still too shaken to say much. Being almost mugged by thugs was enough to ruin a perfectly good evening walk, but watching Max explode like a smoldering volcano had been almost as shocking. She’d never seen a man do that before.

“Good.” He let out a long breath. “We’re lucky they gave up so easily.”

She nodded, finally finding her voice. “Wow, I guess you don’t need a weapon after all,” she said, looking at him with reluctant admiration.

He brushed it off. He knew how to handle himself and he’d been pretty confident, even with three men opposing him, until he’d seen the knife. That could change everything. Luckily, they had weighed the odds and decided not to risk annoying the mob.

Though that made him want to smile. Some people thought anyone Italian had ties to gangsters. That was an ignorant assumption, but it had come in handy this time.

“Okay, let’s go. We’ve got to get out of this neighborhood. Places like this seem to breed thugs like rats thriving in the shadows. Let’s head for streets that are better lit. That way I think.” He pointed down another street and they headed in that direction, moving quickly.

Her feet were aching, but she ignored it. She’d go barefoot if she had to. Anything to get out of this part of town.

“Hold tight to the baby,” Max ordered suddenly, slinging the diaper bag up over his shoulder.

She looked up, startled, and the next thing she knew, he’d bent to slide support under her legs and was swinging her up into his arms, baby and all. She squeaked in protest, but he ignored her.

“You’re going to trip in those shoes,” he told her. “I can handle it. Just hold on.”

She held on and somehow, it worked. He cradled them both in a warm, muscular embrace and walked firmly along the wet sidewalk. She clung to the space just above his chest and beneath his chin and closed her eyes, reveling in the sense of his masculine strength. His heart was beating against her shoulder. She let herself fall into a sort of daze, listening to the rhythm and soaking up the whole of him.

He moved quickly, wondering how he’d let himself get into this insane situation. She was light as a feather, despite the added weight of the baby, and she smelled like a garden in sunshine. Strands of her blond hair flew up and tickled his nose, which he found tantalizing rather than annoying. All in all, she was warm and soft and round and he felt like a Neanderthal. He wanted to take her home and keep her—preferably in his bed.

This wasn’t right. She wasn’t meant for him. In fact, he had other fish to fry, and he was late for the barbecue. But she seemed so small and vulnerable in his arms and he couldn’t resist filling his head with her fresh, intoxicating scent.

A few steps more and they were around the corner, and suddenly cars were whizzing past and the streetlights actually lit up the street instead of just muddying the atmosphere.

“Civilization,” Max muttered, lowering Cari to the ground carefully and looking up and down the road. “But still no cabs.”

And more rain. Thunder rolled and the heavens opened up.

“This way, quickly,” he shouted, pulling her and the baby along until he got them under the limited protection of an empty bus stop shelter. They dashed inside and quickly clung together, trying to stay out of the spray, as water poured off the rounded roof of the tiny kiosk, shooting all around them. After the first moment or two, Cari looked up and realized just how close they were standing. Her nose almost touched his chin.

“Oh,” she said, thinking she should pull back. Being this close when she was being carried was one thing, but this was ridiculous.

“No.” Reaching out, he held the two of them against his chest. “You’ll just get wet.”

“But …” She bit her lip, not sure what to say or where to look.

“Don’t worry,” he said, his voice so low she could hardly hear it over the rain. “I don’t bite.”

“Don’t you?” She heard herself say the words and winced, knowing they sounded almost as though she were flirting. She hadn’t meant to do that.

The way his mouth twisted in a half grin let her know he’d heard it that way, too. “I suppose I could be convinced,” he said softly.

She gazed into his dark eyes and somehow couldn’t look anywhere else. The sound of the rain, the momentary isolation, the way they were pressed so closely, all blended together to weave an enchantment around them. He was going to kiss her. She could see it in his eyes. And if she didn’t watch out, she was going to end up kissing him back.

“No,” she murmured, trying to dredge up the strength to resist.

“Yes,” he countered, lowering his lips to hers.

“No,” she said again, shaking her head.

“Why not?” he asked, so close to her.

“The baby …”

“The baby’s asleep. He can’t see a thing.”

“This is all wrong.” Looking up, she searched his eyes. “We’re not even supposed to be on this date.”

“This isn’t a date,” he said, his own eyes deep and smoky with something nameless that set her pulse pounding. “It’s an encounter. A moment in time.” He dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “A bit of magic. You’ll forget all about it by morning.”

“I don’t think so,” she said with a sigh. “You really shouldn’t …”

“But I want to,” he said huskily. “And you taste so good.”

And then he took her mouth with his and kissed her like she’d never been kissed before.